Response Styles in Survey Research: A Literature Review of Antecedents, Consequences, and Remedies

Although the purpose of questionnaire items is to obtain a person’s opinion on a certain matter, a respondent’s registered opinion may not reflect his or her “true” opinion because of random and systematic errors. Response styles (RSs) are a respondent’s tendency to respond to survey questions in certain ways regardless of the content, and they contribute to systematic error. They affect univariate and multivariate distributions of data...